A Happy New Year for Europe?

In 2016, Europe will face a perfect storm of political challenges, from the surging refugee crisis to the implementation of the TTIP trade agreement. But perhaps the gravest challenge is managing the uncertainty in the run-up to the UK's referendum on whether to remain in the European Union.

PARIS – As the European Union prepares to enter the new year, it faces an almost perfect storm of political challenges. The strategy it has used in the past – barely muddling through a series of calamities – may no longer be enough.

Of course, the EU is no stranger to crisis management. The euro crisis, for example, was widely expected to destroy it; but, after a couple of years of tough summits, the issue was more or less handled. Greece remains in poor shape, but it has retained its EU and eurozone membership. And the EU now has stronger mechanisms for economic-policy coordination.

But the situation today is far more demanding than anything the EU has seen so far – not least because of the sheer number of serious challenges that Europe faces. Far from the “ring of friends” that EU leaders once envisioned, the European neighborhood has turned into a “ring of fire,” fueled largely by the combination of Islamist terrorism and Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. The idea that the EU, with its open societies and firm rule of law, would inspire those values in surrounding countries has been turned on its head, with the disorder of Europe’s near abroad projecting tensions and instability into the Union.

Carl Bildt was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2006 to October 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden’s EU accession. A renowned international diplomat, he served as EU Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Special Envoy to the Balkans, and Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference. He is Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Carl Bildt fears that the political challenges that Europe faces, may not bode well for the new year. It has been like riding a roller coaster for much of 2015, with one crisis after the other - record high unemployment, home-grown terrorism, a falling-out with Russia over Ukraine etc. In the Greek bailout drama, EU leaders had adopted a strategy, that helped muddle through it and avoided the worst-case scenarios, but this may not be enough to weather the "almost perfect storm." The author believes that the most critical moment lies ahead of us. The coming year will show how well Europe integrates over one million of refugees "into European society" and how leaders counter "the rise of xenophobic political parties" and political disenchantment.
What Bildt worries most is a possible "Brexit," that is looming large in the coming months. Britain will hold an in-out referendum on its EU membership before the end of 2017, or perhaps in 2016. The uncertain outcome is hanging like a Sword of Damocles over EU leaders' heads. A No-vote would be a "disaster of the first order for Europe," because Britain is one of Europe's most powerful countries. Hopefully David Cameron may still be able to renegotiate the terms of Britian's membership ahead of the referendum. He has said he will campaign for Britain to remain in the EU if he gets the reforms he wants. Indeed, the chances that British voters will endorse the deal" may be "no higher than 50/50." No doubt EU’s geopolitical clout would be "greatly reduced," in the case of a "Brexit" while "anti-EU forces" elsewhere "would gain strength."
After over "a half-century" of expansion, the EU would "suddenly start shrinking," due to a number of competing visions of Europe that have emerged in recent years. The financial crisis laid bare the north/south divide, with the affluent north bailing out southern states, that resent austerity measures. The refugee drama shows that Eastern European countries are still not yet ready to embrace universal humanitarian values, that the EU stands up for. Berlin appears determined to build a stronger EU, often in its own image, but it will not have everything its own way.
Bildt believes that "a year or two from now, the EU will look very different. It might be a fractured union," struggling to survive politically and to arrest "its breakdown." With a miracle, "it could be a vigorous union that includes the UK" and has gotten its act together on refugee, border, and asylum issues and is finalizing the TTIP and the digital single market." In order to be globally competitive, he urges us, Europeans to support "both the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and a single digital market." Yet it wouldn't come as a surprise if the two projects could fall through, as opponents complain about the flipsides of free-trade agreements, that take a toll on their jobs and living standards.

It is not an every day event that two ex- foreign ministers of important EU countries - Sweden and Germany - write back-to-back articles on the future of the Union. Whilst Mr. Fischer's piece is concerned with the rise of what he mistakenly calls "fascism of the affluent", Mr. Bildt's article lists the challenges facing the EU in the next few years, deploring, at the same time, the "EU's greatly reduced geopolitical clout" in world affairs.

From Monnet onwards, Europeans have time and again been inculcated with the stupid idea that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", meaning that the EU is bound to become stronger after each major crisis. Well, if the so-called "EU crisis management" is in fact an exercise into kicking the can down the road (as it happened with the euro crisis and Greece), then the chances of the monetary union becoming stronger as a result are slim to none...

Mr. Bildt fails to make any mention of the reasons why "the ring of friends" on the EU's southern and eastern borders has become "the ring of fire", fueled by Islamism or Russia"s actions in Ukraine. This unhealthy transformation, however, has happened as a result of the 2011 war in Libya and of the West's ill-fated coup in Kiev. The support of Western democracies for Saudi Arabia and for the jihadis fighting the Assad regime has also heavily contributed to the current migration nightmare in Europe. In other words, in nine out of ten crises the EU suffers the consequences of its own actions directed against Middle Eastern regimes, Russia, Greece and so forth.

As far as the EU's "geopolitical clout" is concerned, this has been consistently and significantly reduced over the past few decades by US leadership of the NATO alliance and this country's control over EU foreign policy, as Mr Bildt knows too well. To give but one example, when Mr Juncker tried to take a more reasoned approach towards EU-Russia relations, the Washington-sponsored politicians, intellectuals and the European media have torpedoed his efforts. Through these and other similar actions, the US have made sure that the EU's diplomatic clout in world affairs is largely symbolic.

If you - contrary to the author - believe that the Euro crisis was "handled" by a massive constitutional breach and that the Schengen system was misused for illegal mass immigration into your country and into your social welfare system - then you will reject the eurocratic view ("open societies and firm rule of law") as euphemistic hypocrisy or even blatant lie. Consequently, under the beforementioned assumptions, you will reject everything they come up with (be it TTIP, capital markets union or whatsoever) and you will welcome everything what harms their project and brings back constitutionality (be it Brexit, Grexit, Frexit, Fixit, Dexit or whatsoever).

What makes them shiver makes you happy. What they fear you long for. What they lack is what in your view is essential. This is: democratic legitimation.

This is a good sign. I have never seen Mr. Bildt so contemplative and self-reflective before.
This is what we need from our elites: Self-reflection and contemplation. If one is a workaholic and constantly on the move and (over-)stimulated, there is no time for these essential times of reflection and introspection. It is always, go, go, go, and grow, grow, grow, when what we really need is slow, slow, slow and know, know, know.
“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Our elites have been living in their own reality bubbles for far too long. Gated communities, private jets, private islands, private meetings, etc., etc. Still many of them will remain in their comfort-zones and reality bubbles, and will be forcibly red-pilled by reality only through harsh events like the terrorist attacks in Paris, but I highly welcome Mr. Bildt's attempt to think outside of his and his friends' elite box.
Happy New Year

The EU glass is either half-full or half-empty. Eastern expansion was Carl's political gamble; and it's turned out- as I originally expected - back in Berlaymont. Invariably Western Europe (ie. Berlin) is still flirting with a Tusk (ex-Polish PM as Council President!) because it doesn't know the way forward.
Western Europe should have chosen the principle of closer integration & no Opt Outs, as a decisive policy framework to finally integrate Western Europe. Once EMU/Euro - under Maastricht - led to political & fiscal union - economic integration of EU Single Market would have been a foregone conclusion by now.
Now, in 2016, ECB/Draghi is admonishing EU political system to either complete the political/economic union or indefinitely impair the success of EMU/Euro.
Brexit is/was really not the issue in Berlaymont; Mandarins of White Hall, at first, sought to derail EMU/Euro by opting out on fundamental policy framework and its objective of *ever closer union*. Therefore let's kick out the *opt outs* and devise a smaller but a more integrated union of the willing.

Globalisation generated an heavily interdependent and interconnected world is serving the economic expectation of Multi National Corporations. In this open system (big swimming pool) is only suitable for big fishes which need to get bigger by eating small ones. Under current system, called Neoliberal Economic System; states, regions or communities have lost their political power and then their economic power. Europe is not isolated from the global system (swimming pool) in which politics have no global consensus to tackle global issues like environment, economic, security, peace and more...

The divide between political classes and elites on the one hand and the rest of us on the other are more than obvious in this piece.
European citizens dont care for the things politicians do (paid as it seems by multinationals to promote globalisation as if this has not been proven the mother of all disasters)...
No Transatlantic agreement is needed for a better europe.What is needed is to stop promoting greed as a ideal,stop advertising globalisation as a solution to local problems.No globalisation will feed the bangladesh hungry.And so they will immigrate.and continue to do so as long as the west doesnt realise that we can not live in this world if we continue to exploit others.Unless we humans cooperate ,not on the basis of the capitalistic big eats small,but on an ethical basis of helpthyneighbour,we are all doomed.....keep wishing...

'The euro crisis, for example, was widely expected to destroy it (the EU); but, after a couple of years of tough summits, the issue was more or less handled'

You can't be serious. Just wait, the underlying problem has not gone away. I would consider this a complacent dismissive comment. It is either arrogant or desperate or deluded, take your pick

'That will be extremely difficult at a time when the United Kingdom is flirting with withdrawal'

Really - why speak down about democracy, supposedly central to the very fundamentals of the EU simply because democratic outcomes may not align with your wishes

'Of course, referenda are inherently unpredictable. On December 3, Danes voted on whether to modify their country’s opt-out on EU home and justice matters to an opt-in ... Very few predicted that the change would be rejected – and even fewer that it would be defeated so soundly, with 53% voting no.'

Another jibe about voters not voting 'correctly' it would seem. You are begining to sound like a businessman who complains his main problem is his customers who wont buy his goods. Perhaps it is best described as being detached from your customer base

The most severe economic problem facing the EU is its aging population by that is not addressed on your list of problems. Please note this cannot be addressed by migration for a number of reasons. I suggest you look at the figures

In 2016 I expect the EU to keep kicking the can down the road - and when the road runs out to build more road - to keep kicking the can onwards

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PS OnPoint

The Mueller report in America, along with reports of interference in this week’s European Parliament election, has laid bare the lengths to which Russia will go to undermine Western democracies. But whether Westerners have fully awoken to the threat is an open question.

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